{"id":314621,"date":"2019-12-24T06:00:55","date_gmt":"2019-12-23T20:00:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=314621"},"modified":"2019-12-24T06:00:55","modified_gmt":"2019-12-23T20:00:55","slug":"over-2000-toys-collected-for-toys-for-tots-program","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/over-2000-toys-collected-for-toys-for-tots-program\/","title":{"rendered":"Over 2,000 toys collected for Toys for Tots program"},"content":{"rendered":"
Over 400 children received toys last Thursday during the Lady Diann Torres\u2019 Toys for Tots distribution ceremony at the Pedro P. Tenorio Multi-Purpose Center. (Kimberly A. Bautista)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In its first year of partnering with the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve\u2019s Toys for Tots program, the Lady Diann Torres Foundation was able to collect over 2,000 new and used toys to donate to children across the CNMI. <\/p>\n

The foundation held its first Toy for Tots distribution at the Pedro P. Tenorio Multi-Purpose Center last Thursday, where they gave away over 400 toys to children ages 0 to 18. <\/p>\n

\u201cI think it was very successful, it was a great turnout tonight; we had a lot of people. We weren\u2019t expecting a lot of people. I think we had over 400 people registered two days in advance,\u201d said first lady Diann Torres. <\/p>\n

Torres explained that she reached out to various government departments. \u201cThis is all the departments getting together and getting all these gifts so we have both new and used,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n

Torres told reporters that compared to the Saipan Chamber of Commerce\u2019s Saipan Young Professionals, which has been doing Toys for Tots for the last five year, the Lady Diann Torres Foundation aims to open the program to a wider range of children and not just underprivileged ones. <\/p>\n

\u201cWith the Saipan Young Professionals, they work with the private companies and they distribute to kids that are underprivileged so we kind of got together and decided to open it to a bigger scale and we worked with the government to get the donations instead of just the private entities,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n

The goal was to gather 9,000 toys\u2014the number of children enrolled in the Public School System\u2014and although the foundation wasn\u2019t able to reach that goal, Torres said they are still happy with the turnout and will strive to go bigger next year. <\/p>\n

\u201c9,000\u2026was a big undertaking but we said let\u2019s go for that but it\u2019s still hard times for some people, so this was still a great turnout. We\u2019re hoping for a bigger better turnout next year,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n

U.S. Marines Corps 1Lt. Brett Lazaroff, the Marines Corps\u2019 Toys for Tots coordinator for the Marianas, said that he was happy with how big the program has gotten in the CNMI in the last five years. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe really just want to see the program grow every year and just seeing the joy on the children\u2019s faces when they get a toy for Christmas, it\u2019s really what the program is about. We hope it continues to grow and we hope we can get more presents every year and that we get more donations,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

Lazaroff said this year was also a record-breaker for the Marianas region as over 10,000 toys have already been collected. <\/p>\n

\u201cLast year we collected just over 10,000 toys between the CNMI and Guam, and we think we\u2019re going to break that record this year. We don\u2019t have the final numbers yet but we know that we\u2019re already over 10,000 between Guam and the CNMI,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In its first year of partnering with the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve\u2019s Toys for Tots…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":309809,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-314621","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314621","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=314621"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314621\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/309809"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=314621"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=314621"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=314621"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}